Chapter 36: You gonna tell me what Rodney said to you?

"Well that was freaky," I muttered under my breath. I sat for a time pondering what Rodney had told me before deciding I had to tell John what had happened, although how I was going to work in the fact that Rodney had taken thoughts right out of John's head I didn't know.

"Has Rodney been to see you yet?" I radioed John to find out where he was.

"He just called me to ask for another meditation session," John replied. "Why?"

"Because he came to see me and he was acting a little ... weird," I said with a hint of worry in my voice. "Said he was trying to make amends – that he wanted to give something back to the people closest to him."

"What did he give you?" John asked curiously.

"Ah ... the names of my biological parents," I admitted softly.

"What?" John's voice was full of incredulity. "Is that even possible?"

"I asked him and apparently for someone with his super human mental powers it is," I replied. "Rodney wrote the details down for me but ... I don't want to know so he said he was gonna give the paper to you. Just – get rid of it okay?"

"I'll take care of it for you," John promised. "Anything else?"

"Not really," I hesitated before adding, "just that Rodney knows about the meaning of the vinculum. Apparently you were thinking about it before Rodney learned how to shield himself from picking up our thoughts."

"Oh," John sounded uncomfortable now. "Was that all he said?"

"All that I'm going to tell you over the radio," I replied. "Can you let me know if Rodney gets worse? I want to be there when ..." I trailed off miserably.

"I'll let you know," John agreed. "I gotta go – Rodney's here."

x

It seemed only moments later that John was calling me from the infirmary to tell me Rodney's condition had deteriorated. I ran down there to find John and the others already gathered around Rodney's bed.

"There must be something we can do," John was saying in frustration. I moved to his side, looking at Rodney sadly – I couldn't believe this was happening – didn't want to believe it.

"It's OK," Rodney said weakly. "You know, I'm actually feeling a sense of peace ... interspersed with moments of sheer terror, of course."

"Rodney, as far as this ascension thing goes, I know you didn't have much success but at this point, what've you got to lose?" John was almost pleading with Rodney to try again. Glancing quickly at John's face I instinctively stepped closer – his eyes were just a little shinier than usual, not something that anyone else would notice, but to me that was a red flag for how upset he was over Rodney's condition.

"May as well go out fighting, huh?" Rodney almost smiled at the idea.

"Absolutely," John urged quietly.

"Hook me up," Rodney said resolutely. Doctor Beckett nodded and picked up the headband. "Carson? Thank you. Thank you for everything," Rodney said gratefully.

"I only wish I could have done more, my friend," Carson replied softly. He attached the headband and then activated it – we could all see the numbers showing that Rodney had work to do to get his EEG low enough.

"Clear blue skies," Rodney muttered to himself, closing his eyes. "All my troubles, just drifting away. OK ... stop talking now."

I had to smiled at that - Rodney being so ... Rodney even when he was on the brink of dying.

"Rodney, you're a good person," Doctor Weir said gently. "Know that we love you."

"You love me?" Rodney smiled at the idea, eyes still closed. "Really? All of you?"

"In a way a friend feels about another friend," John qualified awkwardly, flinching when I poked an elbow into his side. He raised an eyebrow as if to say 'what did I do?' I looked back at him, silently asking him to relax on the 'I don't express my feelings' thing, now of all times. John nodded reluctantly, turning back to look at Rodney again.

"You're just saying that because I'm gonna die," Rodney discounted the sentiment. "Oh, God. I can't believe I'm gonna die," Rodney said in quiet dismay.

"Alright - just back to the blue skies," John ordered quickly before Rodney could get caught up in a tide of panic. "Let your thoughts go. Concentrate on your breathing."

Rodney lay still, eyes closed, giving every appearance of concentrating on John's instructions. The monitor beeped, displaying his EEG reading at 3 Hertz ... then 2 ... then 1 – so low and yet still not enough. I'd gone a bit mentally numb at that point – I knew what was happening but I just couldn't process what it meant. Rodney couldn't die – we needed him and he'd always found a solution for everyone else in the past. Why couldn't he find one for himself now?

"Oh, my God," Carson muttered sickly, looking away.

Rodney surged up in the bed suddenly, grabbing Carson's coat and holding on for dear life. He said nothing, just stared frantically into Carson's eyes. Doctor Beckett gazed back in wordless shock. Rodney's EEG reading shot up past 60 Hertz before crashing back down. I watched sickly as Rodney's eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped down on the bed again, EEG monitor displaying the message "No reading."

"John?" I whispered in disbelief. Wordlessly he squeezed my hand, watching intently as Carson checked Rodney's vitals.

"He's not breathing," Carson moved quickly into emergency mode. "Quick, bag him. We need to get him on a ventilator."

"Carson, he gave us strict orders ..." Doctor Weir trailed off miserably.

"You don't understand," Carson interrupted firmly. "He just told me how to save him."

All I could do was get out of the way as Carson's staff got Rodney hooked up to a ventilator. Once that was done Carson contacted Doctor Zelenka and told him what Rodney had come up with to save himself. I went down to the lab with Doctor Weir and Teyla to help Radek prepare the machine.

"We're en route," Carson reported, voice shifting as though he were running. "His pulse is very weak. Are you ready?"

"We will be," Doctor Weir replied confidently. She walked over to where Radek was working rapidly on the console to see if that really was true.

"Almost," Radek reported simply.

Seconds later Ronon rushed in carrying Rodney in his arms.

"Hurry," Carson urged impatiently. "He can't breathe on his own."

Ronon ran over to the platform and put Rodney down in the right spot.

"OK, stand back," Radek warned. He activated something on his laptop and immediately the platform was engulfed in a green glow. The glow turned into a beam that shifted down and swirled around Rodney's body. 

Seconds passed and then it stopped. The effect was immediate – Rodney sat up and looked around as if startled.

"Rodney?" Carson rushed over to him.

"It worked!" Rodney said in amazement.

"Did it?" Carson asked uncertainly.

"Well, I'm alive, aren't I?" Rodney responded sarcastically.

"Sounds like him," John quipped with a half smile, the tension leaving him abruptly.

"Yes, yes," Rodney said impatiently. He glanced at us intently. "I can't hear one of your thoughts." Turning to Carson he gestured with his fingers as if trying to levitate him again. "The telekinesis has gone." Rodney got to his feet, thinking face clearly evident. "I'm still smart, I think ... Yes! Yes, I'm me! I'm my old self!"

"Are you certain?" Carson looked at him questioningly.

"Yeah, I'm alive!" Rodney confirmed excitedly. "I feel great! I feel, uh ... um ... hungry?"

"He's fine," John smiled at Carson in relief.

"And you said it was impossible," Doctor Weir said to Rodney.

"Yeah, it just came to me," Rodney admitted. "I was, I was, I was floating in this, this big black emptiness and then the answer just came out of nowhere. Look, the device was designed to manipulate your DNA. It couldn't reverse the evolutionary advancement process because everyone's DNA was different. It makes certain changes that cause the DNA to evolve in ways specific to your own unique physiology."

"Yeah," Radek nodded in understanding. "In order to manipulate the DNA back to the previous state, the programme required a precise reference point."

"Fortunately I keep blood samples from all the Atlantis team members for baseline comparisons," Doctor Beckett said.

"I don't understand what any of you are talking about," Ronon admitted freely. He walked over to Rodney and grabbed the front of his shirt.

"What - what?" Rodney looked at him with a worried uncertain expression.

"It's good to have you back, buddy," Ronon said simply, pulling Rodney into a hug complete with back slapping and affectionate manly growling.

"Yes, well -- it's good to be back," Ronon said weakly, clearly puzzled by Ronon's unexpected show of affection.

"Yeah!" Ronon agreed, stepping back again.

"I'm glad you're okay Rodney," I held back until the others had expressed their relief. "You had me worried there for a moment."

"I had me worried too," Rodney admitted freely.

x

Now that everything was back to normal – as normal as it seemed to get on Atlantis anyway – my thoughts turned back to the conversation I'd had with Rodney earlier that day. It was still early afternoon and everyone had returned to duty, even Rodney, after Carson had announced he couldn't find a thing wrong with him. I'd been carrying the flash drive Rodney had given me around in my pocket and decided I might as well have a look.

Once in my lab with laptop humming away I quickly discovered that the flash drive contained a huge amount of detail. There was general information on Earth based nanite technology as well as design specifications, construction notes, and programming code. Rodney must have been granted super human typing speed along with all his other talents to have written so much in such a short time frame. It was gonna take me weeks just to wade through everything to determine if I could even implement the plans he'd created.

"Whatcha reading?" John appeared out of nowhere, leaning over my shoulder to peer at my screen.

"Don't sneak up on me!" I protested, swivelling to glare at him as my heart raced in shock. I'd asked him many times to give up on the whole 'looking over my shoulder' thing but it amused him enough that I knew he probably never would.

"You were so absorbed you didn't hear me come in," John defended himself. "That's not the same as sneaking."

"Did you want something ... other than to scare a year off my life?" I asked sarcastically.

"Rodney's back in his lab," John said conversationally, "trying to make sense of half the things he invented while he was a super genius."

"I didn't think of that," I admitted. "For Rodney, knowing he'd broken the boundaries of science but not being able to understand it anymore would be the ultimate in frustration."

"At least he's alive," John pointed out starkly. "You gonna tell me what Rodney said to you?"

"Nothing you haven't said yourself," I discounted, swivelling back around to my laptop. "Do you think Rodney will keep what he 'discovered' about all of us a secret?"

"Elizabeth spoke to him about that," John reassured me. "He agreed to 'forget' everything – said a lot of the detail was kind of vague now anyway." John put his hands on my shoulders and swung me back around to face him again. "Now tell me what Rodney said to you."

"I don't know why this feels so embarrassing," I complained, looking down at my hands instead of at John. "He just told me that you ah ... really love me ... and that you'd never abandon me."

"So how did the necklace come into it?" John persisted, urging me to look up at him.

"God you just never quit do you?!" I said in a grumpy tone. "It was your thoughts Rodney heard – you must already know what you were thinking!" John just looked at me expectantly – rolling my eyes in frustration I gave in. "Okay! Rodney said your love was the forever kind - that's why you weren't bothered about what the necklace represented to the Ancients, because you're fully determined to hold on to me forever. Happy now?"

"Do my feelings embarrass you?" John asked in a neutral tone. I looked up at him intently but he had his military face on so I couldn't tell how important my answer might be to him.

"Of course not," I said sincerely. "I'm perfectly happy for everyone here to know how you feel – just as long as I don't have to be the one telling them about it!"

"Ah," John nodded in understanding. "Fair enough. So what were you so absorbed in when I got here?"

"It's probably nothing," I admitted, "but to be honest I can't tell at the moment. Rodney was looking for things to invent so I asked him to work on a defence against the Replicator nanites based on my anti-nanite proteins. He gave me this," I gestured to the screen. "There's a lot here to read before I can work out if it really is something we can use."

"Clever," John congratulated me. "I can't believe we had Rodney super genius around for days and you were the only one who asked him to do something specific with that. I thought about it when we first realised what the machine had done but I didn't follow it up."

"Maybe that's the upside of living such an unstructured life," I said simply. "Always gotta be practical, no matter the situation. I'll wait a few days – give Rodney the chance to get used to being only an ordinary genius again – before I bring this to him."

"Okay," John agreed. "Wanna go get some dinner?"

"Sure," I let John pull me from my chair. Instead of walking anywhere I stood close to him and put my arms around his waist. "Thanks," I said softly.

"For what?" John looked down at me with a puzzled expression.

"For the whole 'hold on to me forever' thing," I explained. "It means a lot."

"Too easy," John lifted me off my feet in a bone crushing hug. Putting me back on the ground he kept an arm around me as he walked us both out the door.

John knew I had issues with the 'marriage and kids' thing so I didn't feel guilty for leaving that part out of my recitation of what Rodney had borrowed from John's head. And if my issues had gotten more layered and complex over time, well ... the very thought of trying to explain all of that was just more motivation to keep it to myself for now.

Authors Note:

It struck me as odd when I watched Tao of Rodney that no one thought to ask Rodney to solve any specific problems – of which they have many! Instead he wasted his genius hours on new maths no one was going to understand. They did get Jumper hyper drives out of it but that was an accident really. Hence my desire to write something deliberate into my story :D